Once while doing a film score with the Los Lobos guys, David Hidalgo played this beautiful guitar line.  I asked, "David, where did that come from?" He repied, " I don't know -- I guess my reception is pretty good today..."

A Few New Classic Lines:

1.  "This is how I do it live."

2.  "I'm playing it the right way -- THEY are all playing it wrong!"

3.  "But this is what I always play."

Producer to band:  "One hour with you guys is like spending SEVEN hours with any other band I've ever worked with!"

People do not value what they get for free.  And they usually do not think of ‘time’ as having value...

After several weeks into a recording project for a singer/songwriter with a limited amount of time and budget, there's probably nothing worse than hearing -- as you're attempting to record the first vocal for her record -- "I really haven't been singing for the last six months"...

I was doing overdubs on some tracks that I had cut with a producer from Nashville while a 'famous mixer' was mixing tracks for this producer at another local studio.  At some point, the mixer swung by to pick up the producer to bring him over to his studio to check the mix.  He walked into out control room and said, "I'm sure it [the tracks we were working on] sounds fine, the meters look right."  After he said this, I aksed him what he thought of the kick drum phase on the track we had up.  He leaned over, listened for a second, then said, " I really can't tell until I solo everything up.  But I'm gonna do something for you FREE OF CHARGE."  He then proceeds to select 400 Hz on the console EQ and turns the gain for the band completely down !!!  He looked at me and said, "There ya go -- free of charge".

Capturing a performance:  One of the earliest records I worked on was with a blues singer named Ted Hawkins that producer Tony Berg hired me to record. We were doing acoustic guitar and vocal tracking.  Ted played guitar in open tuning, but the song we were going to do had minor chords in it, so we were waiting for Tony to show up to accompany him.  As Ted was warrming up on the song, he sounded so great that I asked him to sing it down a few times.  We did three takes, and when Tony came in I said, "I think you should hear this!"  We ended up using the first take, and doing all the overdubs around this performance.  Lesson -- always be ready for a take...

I was lucky enough to record the Reverend Al Green one day.  The producer was asking for a vocal lick at the top of the song, but after the first attempt he asked us to hold on a second.  As we sat in silence in the control room, Al said out loud 'Show me something."  He wasn't talking to us though.  Then he said, "No, I don't like that one.  Show me another."  Then he looked at us and said, "Go ahead."  He sang a beautiful lick, and that was that...

You know you are going to be there a while when the lead singer refuses to sing until the background vocals are on, and the background singers won't sing until the lead vocal is done...

I was on a session once with a famous British 'heavy metal' bass player, who regularly wears cutoff denim shorts, a denim jacket, flip flops, and a WWII  German Officer's hat.  He was doing a bass overdub on a song, and started playing all of these 'out' chords. The producer said, "Hey -- the chords are F, Bb, and C."  The bass player snarled back -- "I tried those and I didn't like them, so I'm trying some others!"

a few stories and observations from past sessions